José Sanchis Sinisterra (Valencia, 1940) is a Spanish playwright, teacher and theatre director. His works have been published in several languages and performed in Europe and Latin America. He has received numerous awards, including the Max Prize for New Theater Trends and the Ministry of Culture's National Award for Dramatic Literature for Terror and Misery in Early Francoism, as well as the Max Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. He has also written essays on theatrical theory and is considered one of the main points of reference for the young avant-garde in Spanish-speaking countries. In 1963 he founded the Asociación Independiente de Teatros and in 1977 the Teatro Fronterizo, a center for theatrical experimentation. It achieved popularity with !Ay, Carmela! (1987, later adapted to film by C. Saura in 1990), a work about the Spanish Civil War. Since the 80s he has been dedicated to the study of the contamination between theater and literature, continuing to write complex texts and works characterized by a tendency towards intertextuality.
